


The Paranormal Adventures of Sam Wesson and Dean Smith

by baehj2915



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Ambiguity, Episode: s04e17 It's a Terrible Life, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:46:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baehj2915/pseuds/baehj2915
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The extended version of "It's a Terrible Life." </p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>“There are no ghosts in the walls. It’s something more sinister than that. You’re unprepared to deal with what lies in wait for us. It will devour you whole. You’re too important. You should leave now.” </i></p>
<p>  <i>“Okay, man, what the hell,” Dean sighed. “Who are you and what the hell are you talking about? How do you know we hunt ghosts? What the hell are you doing here?”</i></p>
<p>  <i>The man sighed and finally looked at Dean like a normal person would, with frustration. </i></p>
<p>  <i>“I am Castiel. And I am talking about evil. You are—It doesn’t need to be you. I am talking about the apocalypse… You should get out of here. Right now.” </i></p>
<p>  <i>Dean and Sam shared another look. </i></p>
<p>  <i>And started laughing. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Paranormal Adventures of Sam Wesson and Dean Smith

**Author's Note:**

> So this idea is basically an AU of "It's a Terrible Life" with the idea that what if it had gone on forever. What if it had included Castiel? Because either a) Zachariah's background history was filled in with background from Dean and Sam's life or b) Zachariah wanted to punish/teach a lesson to Cas as well. 
> 
> OR this could be an AU based off "It's a Terrible Life" where there isn't necessarily any dream-like control over the lives of Dean Smith and Sam Wesson and they start monster hunting without the Winchester special skills background. :/
> 
> Hope you enjoy.

“Huh,” Sam said, starting to nudge at the sludgy pool of blood still left from the body with the tip of his shoe. 

Dean could only cringe at the prospect of blood ruining the leather, even if they were cheap shoes. He was sad, sure. The loss of human life that happened in their investigations of spirits was tragic. But you can only express tragedy so much or you’d go insane. But as they took on more hunting jobs their funds were limited. It was bad enough having to sacrifice his diet for gross road food. Dean did not look forward to the prospect of buying giant new shoes for Sam’s giant feet. 

Also it still looked tacky enough to leave a shoe print. Dean had seen enough CSI to know they can find out who you are from that shit.

He put a hand on Sam’s arm. “Dude, don’t.” 

Sam rolled his eyes. “Well, look. Even if it weren’t two miles from the last murder, I overheard the police. This was totally from a knife wound, a slit throat. Ghosts don’t use knives. Do they?”

Dean shrugged. “I suppose they could. That one ghost used rope, well, ghost-rope. I don’t know. We’ve been kind of hitting a wall on the whole Ghostfacers front.”

“Yeah, we’re gonna have to start finding some more reliable research avenues. I mean, more people than us and the Ghostfacers have to be doing this. Maybe we should try to contact them and see if they know other people.”

It had been two months since Dean quit his job Sandover and embarked on the weirdest journey of his life with some guy he barely knew, but felt like he knew more. Now they traveled the United States looking for evidence of the supernatural, finding ghosts and stopping them. Sam still had weird vaguely prophetic dreams sometimes. They were getting better at finding cases. Sometimes they dressed up in suits and pretended to be FBI agents, which made Dean twitchy as fuck because that was an actual crime. Entering a closed crime scene was also a crime, which they were currently doing in the former apartment of the former Terry Brooks. 

All the grave digging they did went without mentioning, but nobody got arrested for grave digging anymore so Dean was less concerned about that. 

He was pretty sure. 

Oh god, now he was going to get arrested for grave robbing.

So, yeah, his life had taken a pretty severe left turn, but that was surprisingly all right. He and Sam had a natural chemistry that bordered on creepy sometimes, but felt homey and comfortable mostly. Dean had never felt right with the world. It was something he always pushed away and pushed away. It wasn’t so much that he felt like an outsider, though he did a little, but he felt half a beat out of sync with everyone else. The day to day of his life—going to work, chatting up clients, making phone calls, driving his car—all felt slightly unreal, like he was watching it happen to someone else. It was why he obsessed about his schedule, his diet, his routine. He just wanted to make it all feel more real, more lasting.

So it was extremely odd, crazy even, that he felt secure for the first time in a long time even though he was now basically living off his savings and his portfolio. And he felt more in touch hunting ghosts with Sam than he had giving orders to his secretary. 

The ridiculousness of that wasn’t lost on Dean. But he wondered, if he had to get that far from normal to start feeling right, what else might be missing out on?

Sam stood in font of him, commanding his attention. 

“What if this isn’t a ghost?”

“Like, what if it’s a regular murder? The girlfriend said all the doors had been locked, no sign of break-in, alarm set, and it smelled like sulfur. Not to mention the dude’s neck had been twisted clear around. Sounds supernatural to me.” 

“No, I know. I mean, what if it’s a different supernatural thing?” 

“Like what?”

Sam shrugged, defying his heavily muscled six-foot-four frame to look like a lost little kid. “I dunno. The forums were mentioning all sorts of things. Shapeshifters, poltergeists, succubi. What if they’re all real?”

“I don’t think succubi drain the blood from people.”

Sam huffed. “I don’t know what they do. I was just saying there are other possibilities and we need to be better informed. Also, his blood wasn’t drained. Well—“

“Not all of it.”

Dean and Sam caught each other’s eye while remaining stock still at the intruding voice. He could see Sam grip hard around his iron crowbar, while Dean tried to slowly slip his finger around the trigger of his salt-gun. Spirits tended not to talk to them, which left a human intruder, someone who knew the deceased, or, what Dean had been dreading, actual police. None of those possibilities would be happy to see them standing over the spot where someone had been killed early that morning. 

They turned around to face the man who’d spoken, but he was half hidden in the doorway that came from the darkened kitchen. What Dean could see in the relative dark was an abrupt cheekbone, some stubble, a tan trench coat, and bit of shine reflecting from the man’s short dark hair. 

But even as only a few tense lines in the dark, he radiated an uncomfortable vibe that Dean couldn’t quite grasp. That was unusual. Dean had been so successful at his job because he was so adept at getting a read on people and knowing what pitch to use. 

“Some missing. A discrepancy between the amount on the floor and the amount left in the body. Not much, but… simple math.” 

The man’s voice was deep and troubled. Clearly a pack-a-day guy. Dean could sort of see gritty detective thing as a possibility, but a detective would have to announce himself. Dean was maybe pretty sure about that. And would probably arrest them first without explaining the crime scene. He was almost ninety percent on that. 

“Are you a detective?” He said. 

“But then you ask yourself, who would take it? What’s it for? Who wants blood and why?” 

The guy was still making no move for coming into the living room, or even looking directly at them. Not accusing them of tampering with the crime scene or murder or anything else.

Sam and Dean shared another, more confused look. 

“Uh, what’s your name? What do you want?” Sam asked. 

The guy finally moved, tying the belt on his trench coat around his waist. It wasn’t until then Dean even realized how weirdly motionless he’d been.

He came into the light that flooded into the living room from the streetlamp outside. Dean was embarrassed by how shocked he was by the stranger’s good looks. 

He had a disheveled, harried look going on, but clearly rocking it. Five-o-clock shadow, sex hair, shadows under the eyes, a few worry lines, but it all worked for him. There was something tense about his jaw. It was softened a little by round, bitable lips and surprisingly light eyebrows. But the most dramatic, compelling part of his face was the eyes. Not that they were blue, even though, damn, but how intense and penetrating his eyes were. 

And they were looking right at Dean. More like into him. 

“You should not be in here.” 

“You’re not police,” Sam said, but it sounded a little like he was testing it. 

When the man’s gaze switched with reptilian caution to Sam’s face Dean felt a little relieved and a little lost. 

“It isn’t safe.” 

Dean couldn’t help himself. “That wasn’t ominous.” 

“No, it is,” he said, without looking at Dean. His eyes were darting back and forth, scanning Sam’s face. 

“Okay, you’re obviously not a detective or an officer. Who are you? Why isn’t it safe?” 

The man ignored Sam and forced his way between them to walk to the window. He stared out into the sky even though the blinds were half-drawn. Dean refrained from demanding to know who the hell this guy was and why he was so hot for a creeper. But he interrupted his own silence. 

“There are no ghosts in the walls. It’s something more sinister than that. You’re unprepared to deal with what lies in wait for us. It will devour you whole. You’re too important. You should leave now.” 

“Okay, man, what the hell,” Dean sighed. “Who are you and what the hell are you talking about? How do you know we hunt ghosts? What the hell are you doing here?”

The man sighed and finally looked at Dean like a normal person would, with frustration. 

“I am Castiel. And I am talking about evil. You are—It doesn’t need to be you. I am talking about the apocalypse… You should get out of here. Right now.” 

Dean and Sam shared another look. 

And started laughing. 

“Why? Is the devil coming to get us?” Sam said.

“Not at this moment. Right now the police are.”

Sam and Dean paused at the surety of the man’s—Castiel’s—tone. So of course, in the quiet they started to hear sirens. Sam and Dean scrambled out of the apartment and into the hallway before they realized that the building was not secured and they’d just walked in the front door. They couldn’t leave through the same with police coming. Dean caught a flash of Castiel’s trench coat behind them, going the opposite way. Dean caught Sam’s eye and shrugged. 

The followed the crazy apocalypse man. 

~*~

By the time they stopped running, they’d followed Castiel—seriously what kind of old-fashioned bullshit Latin maybe French whatever name was that—into a part of town where the downtown buildings were bleeding into a not-terribly-well-maintained neighborhood. The sounds of sirens were long gone. The streetlamps were disappearing and a general feel of being more isolated was creeping in. Dean was seeing more than one or two houses down the quiet street with ‘For Sale’ signs. It was pretty close to abandoned for a residential area. 

“You need to go back where you came from now,” Castiel said without turning around.

“Um, no!” Sam said in a huff. “You said the police were coming and they came. Since you lead us out of there, I’m assuming you didn’t, like, call them, but something is definitely weird. You knew we were here hunting a ghost, but now you’re trying to tell us the apocalypse is happening?” Sam stopped to grab Castiel by the arm and pull him around. “Who are you?” 

There was a growl to Castiel’s voice that made Dean feel shame. Deeply.

“I told you. I am Castiel. And I don’t think fighting in the street is a good way of avoiding attention.”

Dean stepped in, pushing Sam back by the chest. “He’s right, but we need some answers. And you’re the one who came to us. So where the hell are we going?” 

Castiel indicated down the street with his jaw, without ever taking his really unnecessarily intense eyes off Dean. 

“The church.”

“Church?” Dean echoed in surprise. “Okay, I just want you to know if you plan on murdering us we’re tougher than we look.” 

Sam sighed.

Castiel’s nose crinkled in confusion. “I work there.”

“You’re a priest?” 

Sam sighed again. Dean wanted to tell him he wasn’t as adorable as he thought and made a mental note to tell him later. 

Castiel looked at him like he was truly dim. “Groundskeeper.” 

Dean checked the loafers on the man’s feet, his trousers, and the hint of a tie behind his trench coat, but decided not to say anything. As they started walking again, Dean did think it would be a better idea if they ingratiated themselves to this guy, or maybe just found out more about him. 

“Hey, uh, Cas,” he said, enjoying the sound of the short name. “Gotta last name?”

He could see Castiel’s jaw tense at the question. He let a long silence pass before answering in a near whisper, “Novak,” like he was ashamed of the answer.

When they arrived at the church, Dean was relieved to know they were going into the church at two in the morning through a normal-sized side door, not the big, showy front doors that people waited out in front of on Sunday mornings. What they walked into looked really nothing like a church. It was a concrete stairwell that led down to what looked like a large basement kitchen. It made Dean uncomfortable, like he was peaking behind a curtain. He’d wondered a bunch of times since he’d started hunting ghosts about how much God or religion or whatnot was really involved. Ghosts meant an afterlife. He didn’t really like thinking about it and being in the inner workings of a church made it worse. Being with this strangely unearthly man who insisted they were somehow involved in the apocalypse wasn’t helping at all. 

They walked past the tables into the back of the empty kitchen to another door and then up four flights of long, meandering stairs. Just when Dean was going to inquire when this little trip would end, Castiel let them into a tiny bedroom where crazy had exploded all over. 

There were no more dimensions than a simple box. It was small enough to feel claustrophobic with all three of them inside it. There was a twin bed, with a small dresser at the end, a little desk with a chair, and a ceiling fan. Those were all the things that evidently looked pre-fab and came with room. But all along the walls from floor to about chest or eye-level, books lined the room. Dean could see them filling up the space under the bed as well. More books, notebooks, and loose sheets of paper were piled on the desk. 

Above the book-line on the walls were sheets of paper taped up, alternating between horrifying sketches of monsters or nightmares and lined rows of what looked like computer code or Greek or Elvish, or maybe all three. It surrounded them in a complete three-sixty around the room. Dean startled when he got to look at the back of the door. Lined in white chalk was a big creepy pentagram with little squiggly almost-letters all around it and up and down the doorframe. 

Sam gave Dean an eyebrow-heavy look that clearly said, “Are you entirely sure this isn’t where we’re going to be murdered?” 

“So, uh,” Dean swallowed, trying to remain calm. “You didn’t mention that you also lived here. In a tiny church attic. Kind of like Quasimodo.” He laughed because nothing could relieve the tension of weirdness and now he was kind of afraid for his life and didn’t actually want to piss off the unfortunately hot crazy man with whom he was trapped in a small room. 

“Quasimodo lived in the bell tower. Everybody knows that,” he said with remarkable deadpan, rustling through a pile of notebooks on his desk. 

Sam tapped in his shoulder and pointed to a section of one stack of books next to the door. About fifteen in a row had some word on the spine like _quantum_ or _physics _or _quantum physics_ , but might as well have read _something Dean would never understand___. He’d gotten a BA in Business, not über geek. A closer look a bunch of other books showed they were mostly high-level science books, from physics to neuroscience, stacked in between books about yogic trances, Gnosticism, and ancient prophecies. 

Sam tapped excitedly on one of the sheets of paper on the wall that didn’t look like needle-sharp teeth gnawing on somebody’s legs. 

“Is this a proof?” He said excitedly. 

Castiel nodded distractedly as he leafed through a black and white composition book. Dean couldn’t make out was on most of it, but he saw flashes of more drawings and every page appeared to be covered in rows and rows of tiny handwriting. 

That was, like, Kevin Spacey from Seven level insanity. 

“Are you telling me this isn’t all gibberish?” he whispered in an aside to Sam. 

Sam was looking at the paper with a kind of awe. He shook his head. 

“I mean, I don’t know. These… It’s not mathematic. It’s a logical proof, I think. But I don’t recognize a lot of these symbols. It’s just… The form is there. I know the shape and if it’s right… It’s a proof. I mean you can’t make up knowing how to write a proof.”

Nervously, Sam said, “Castiel. What are these symbols?”

Castiel ignored him again and held his notebook open for them to see. 

“I knew it,” he said, his voice sort of breathy with vindication. “I knew all of this was real. You’re the first ones I can verify.”

He thrust the book in Sam’s hands, excitedly pulling a wad of paper out of one of his pockets, dropping pens and his wallet on the floor in the process. 

On the notebook was a giant block of tiny script in between two drawings. One was a shaded man with a fiery sword; the other was a taller man in white surrounded by black clouds. Right on the top of the page it said: “The brothers are chosen. Vessels for heaven and hell.”

Castiel uncrumpled one of the papers from his pocket and thrust it in Dean’s face excitedly. “Look. See. You are the brothers. You fight evil. You’re chosen by God.”

What Dean was holding in his hand was obviously a crumpled drawing of the side of his face, which was creepy enough, but he was also surrounded by a halo of fire in the drawing. 

“It’s you,” Castiel said. “I drew it yesterday. I kept it because I knew it would be important because you are important, so I kept it. You’re the brothers.” 

“We’re not brothers,” Dean said, mindful of Sam’s tensing next to him. It didn’t matter if Sam had dreams where they were brothers. That wasn’t real. “We’re not even related.” 

Castiel considered that for a moment and then shook his head. “No, you are. I know things,” he said with solemnity. “This is one of the things I know. You are the brothers whom heaven and hell have chosen to represent them in the apocalypse on Earth. You, Dean, are Michael’s fiery sword. And Sam is the vessel of Lucifer.” 

Before Dean could say he was nobody’s fiery anything, Sam snapped the notebook shut, handed it to Dean, and shouted, “Screw you! How come I’m batting for Team Satan in your stupid God delusion? I’m the good one. My ex and I used to volunteer at an animal shelter—Wait… We never told you our names.” 

That was a really damn good point. 

“I told you. I know things.” 

“Are you stalking us?” Dean asked, trying desperately for rational explanations. 

Castiel sighed in frustration. He shifted awkwardly, like he was about to lose it. So he clenched his fists and took a deep breath. “I know things, okay. I don’t make them up. They just exist inside me. And I write them down so I can find the answers. People told me I was wrong. They tried to tell me I was lying. They tried to tell me I was delusional. But I don’t generate this. It courses through me. You know I’m not lying. You know it.”

Dean felt torn between wanting to prove everything he said wrong and wanting to trust that this guy was right. It was an actual physical pain in his chest. Because it was all clearly awful and insane, but the words Cas said felt honest. Like Castiel couldn’t be dishonest. 

And he was looking at a drawing of his own damn face. There was really no way Castiel could’ve faked that. 

“So, so,” he added nervously, “you must leave. You see. You have to stop the apocalypse. Only you can do it. And it isn’t time yet. If you are killed, there’s no hope.”

Sam threw his hands up in surrender. “Assuming this isn’t all just… you know, insane. How? How can we stop the freaking apocalypse?”

Doubt and confusion marred Cas’s face, like the fact that Sam and Dean didn’t immediately believe him was inconceivable to him. He tugged at his hair and rubbed his palm in his eye in frustration. Dean took the opportunity to grab the wallet Castiel had dropped on the floor to check something he’d wanted to know. 

For some reason, Dean was disappointed. He was angry, even. 

Aside from two one-dollar bills and a folded up piece of paper that read only “Balthazar?” there was where two cards in it. One was an Illinois state ID, not a driver’s license, with Castiel’s picture, mussed hair and indignant expression, but the name there was listed as “James Novak.” The second card was a medical alert card saying that James Novak was a schizophrenic patient at St. Ignacius Hospital whose emergency contact was Amelia Novak, his wife. 

Castiel, or whoever, was about to start talking, but Dean interrupted him. 

“Come on, Sam. We’re going.” 

“Wait—“

“Listen, James, Castiel, whatever,” Dean said with a growl. “I don’t know how or when you drew this picture of me, but this has gotta stop. You have to stop following us. You have to go back on your medication or whatever. This is not good for you. But we’re leaving.”

“Whoa, Dean, what’s going on?” 

He shoved the ID cards in Sam’s face. 

“What are you—Stop looking at that!” Castiel, or James, snatched them out of Dean’s hand and glared at Dean with tenfold the intensity he’d seen earlier. “That’s not real! That’s fake. It’s not—I’m not Jimmy Novak. I am Castiel. You—you’re the brothers. You have to understand!”

“Listen, man, I don’t know how you got fixated on us, but you…” He stopped to keep the sound of hurt out of his voice. He really couldn’t understand why he wanted Castiel to be real so badly. “You need help.” 

Dean suddenly felt himself uncomfortable pressed up against the wall of books. Castiel was no less than an inch a way from his face. Dean could see his mouth tighten into a firm white circle and his nostrils flare. He could feel Castiel’s eyes on his face like he was standing next to an open flame. 

“I am telling the truth. I am. This life isn’t real. For me, or for you. You can feel it too. Tell me you know I’m telling the truth.”

Sam finally pulled Castiel off of Dean and pushed him towards the bed. Dean stood still in shock for too long, staring at this man. How he looked sure and vulnerable at the same time. In spite of how crazy everything looked and sounded, Dean wanted to believe him and he didn’t know why. 

So he simplified everything by just walking away. 

Castiel’s voice followed them as they left saying, “Don’t chase after them! Don’t let them find you!”

He could hear Sam behind him, with heavy footsteps, calling his name, and giving up by the time they hit the second set of stairs. He couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to go back to Castiel and hear him out. But he kept walking, because he knew better. He knew to just forget about this apocalypse nonsense and move on. 

That didn’t stop him from memorizing the contact number for Amelia Novak and putting it in his phone when he got outside. 

~*~

It took a few hours of arguing with himself in the morning before Dean finally contacted Amelia Novak. 

He argued with Sam a bit too, but it wasn’t entirely clear if either of them were on a definite side of the issue. 

Sam was the one who convinced him to quit Sandover and join him in ghost hunting. Sam was the one who had prophetic dreams. Sam was the one who believed in this supernatural crap with much more ease than Dean did. If anyone were likely to believe in Castiel’s idea about a heaven-and-hell, destiny-style apocalypse, it would’ve been Sam. But Sam was as back and forth on the possibility that Castiel was right as Dean was. Castiel was a schizophrenic named James Novak, but the fact was that when he had told Dean that this life wasn’t real, he’d felt it, deep in his chest. He wasn’t used to going on his instinct, but it had felt right. 

They decided on trying to find out more information. 

Sam used his computer magic to find out Jimmy Novak’s police record. The first report had been ten years ago, a drunk and disorderly that had been dropped. The second time was an arrest less than a year after that for public disturbance. Two years after that was an arrest for public nudity. Then nothing. Each time an Amelia Novak had bailed him out.

They drove to Pontiac, about an hour from the town they were in, posing as FBI again. It made him nervous but they’d never been questioned yet. Apparently most people really were kind of afraid of the FBI and just wanted to get rid of them. 

Dean was a little surprised to see an attractive blonde woman with a very serious look to her open the door. Surprised enough that Sam took the lead.

“Hello, ma’am. Agents Cooper and Kandusky, FBI. Are you Amelia Novak?” 

She nodded.

“We were wondering if we could have a few words with you about James Novak.”

She tensed, stepping away from the door slightly. “Is he in any trouble? Is he alright?”

“He’s fine,” Dean said. “We just need to question him on something he might have witnessed.” 

“We’ve had some trouble locating him,” Sam added. When Amelia sighed he said, “Are you still in contact with your husband?” 

“Yes, well… It’s complicated. You are aware of his condition, aren’t you?”

“We’re aware, but maybe we could come inside and talk about the details.”

Dean felt he’d gotten pretty good at this impersonating a Federal Agent business in a really short time. Amelia’s reluctant sigh as she stepped away from the threshold seemed to confirm that. 

When they all settled in a nice living room with fluffy beige furniture, Dean looked around the room. There was no fireplace, but pictures on the wall. An elderly couple, several pictures of a young blonde at different ages, Amelia and the girl and a brown-haired man that wasn’t Castiel. There was one small picture that was obviously a younger Castiel holding a baby. Dean had a sinking feeling in his gut that little girl was his if the blue eyes were any indication.

He cleared his throat. “So, when’s the last time you talked to your husband?” 

“About a month ago.”

“That doesn’t concern you? That he hasn’t checked in with you in that long.”

Dean didn’t know why he was getting defensive over Castiel, but it kind of barreled out of his mouth before he could stop it. It looked like Mrs. Novak didn’t appreciate it. 

“Not really, no. He’s never been that consistent about when he calls or comes to visit. But he’s been pretty stable with this medication for three years now. He’s got a job. He’s actually committed to living indoors. Things have been good for a while. If he’s not living at the church anymore, I don’t know what I can do for you.”

They shared a look. Dean felt bad for putting this woman through their lies but they needed to find out more about Castiel.

“Indoors?” Sam said cautiously. 

Amelia nodded tensely. “He went through bouts of homelessness because he refused to live inside. He wouldn’t stay here. He wouldn’t stay in the shelter. And he couldn’t hold down a job. We were so desperate we tried to get him to stay in a tent in the backyard, but he wouldn’t do it. He said roofs hid him from God and he wanted to be as close to God as possible.”

Well that kind of explained living in a Church attic, Dean supposed. 

“If he’s not at the church, you might try the forest.” She looked directly at Dean. “Good luck with that.”

Dean cleared his throat. “Are his… delusions mainly religious?”

She nodded. 

“Are you familiar at all with the name ‘Castiel?’”

Her eyes narrowed in on Dean with intense suspicion. “Yes. That’s his… That’s what he calls himself sometimes. Castiel, an Angel of the Lord.”

“Does he ever talk about the apocalypse?”

“No.” 

“Has he ever mentioned anything about ghosts?”

“No, why? Why do you want to know these things? I thought you said he was a witness to a crime. Why do you need to know this?”

Sam interrupted. “That’s confidential. I assure you your husband isn’t in any trouble. We just want to get a better picture on how to approach him.” 

She seemed to relax a little at that, but still eyed them warily. “My experience with Jimmy and law enforcement has never been that mindful of his schizophrenia.” 

“Could you tell us about his previous arrests? That’s one seven years ago, one nine, and one ten years ago.” 

“He wasn’t arrested the first time. That’s when… That’s when we found out. He’d gone missing for two days. He’d been acting strangely. We just thought it was from the stress.”

“What kind of stress?” Dean said.

“He was finishing his masters program.”

Sam and Dean shared a look. “In physics?” Sam offered. 

She nodded. “Claire was still a baby. With work and grading and his research, I just thought… I had hoped he was just cooling off somewhere. But then he was found in Chicago drawing symbols on the floor of some church, raving about some kind of mathematical pattern that could locate God. They thought he was on drugs.” Amelia laughed bitterly. “He was going to get a PhD in quantum physics, you know. He was so focused. Now all he talks about is angels and God. And demons.” 

“Demons? What about demons?”

She frowned at Dean accusatorily. She was about to say something when the front door opened and the little girl from the pictures walked in. She looked to be about eleven and had the same kind-of-alien quality to her eyes that Castiel had. She dropped her backpack on the floor before she stopped at the sight of Sam and Dean. 

“Mom?”

“Go upstairs, Claire. These men are from the government. They just have a few questions about your father. I’ll be up in a few minutes.” 

But Claire stood still. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, sweetheart. Go upstairs.”

“Because he was scared last week.”

“That’s—what do you mean last week?”

Claire blushed a little. Obviously she’d said something she didn’t want to.

“Did you see your father last week? Where?” 

“It’s okay,” Dean said. “Your father isn’t in any trouble. We just want to know where he is. If you could tell us anything that would be helpful.”

She looked at Amelia. “He came by when you were at book club. He said he had to put those drawings on the doors so demons wouldn’t get us. He did it in white so they wouldn’t show up against the walls. He told me not to tell you.”

Amelia dropped her head into her hands. The slump of her shoulders looked to be a familiar pose for her. 

“Claire, you always have to tell me when your father comes here. You remember it’s for his own good we know how he’s behaving, right? I don’t care what he tells you. You have to tell me if he shows up. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now go to your room and do your homework while I finish talking to these gentlemen.”

Once they could no longer hear Claire’s feet on the steps, Amelia turned right back around with determination. 

“Can I tell you something about Jimmy?” 

Sam tried to shrug casually. “Yeah, sure.”

“Jimmy really isn’t the man I married anymore. When this first started, I hounded him day and night about group homes, taking his meds, treatment options. Everything I could think of to get him healthy. It was a long time before I realized Jimmy was never going to be the same again because it’s not just the mental disorder. Jimmy doesn’t want to be the same man he was.”

Apparently she could see Dean’s face, obviously struggling to come with something to say for that. He had nothing. He wasn’t good at comfort. But she held a hand up, effectively interrupting him anyway.

“I really can’t help you, agents. I’ve never been able to get him to keep a cell phone. With his condition, he’s just not… I really wish I could help him, but I can’t. I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

~*~

The drive back to the motel had been quiet. Dean could almost feel Sam’s desire to ask questions, but he refused to indulge that. 

So Cas was a schizophrenic, with a family he was no longer capable of providing for. He was just a regular guy with an illness, who’d apparently been stalking them. Dean should’ve been pissed, well, he was, but mostly he was just disappointed. And he couldn’t explain why. It’s not like he knew the guy. Deep down though, Dean had wanted Castiel to be right.

It was an uneasy sensation that wasn’t helped by arriving in their begrudgingly shared motel room to find Castiel waiting for them. 

Well, to be honest, it didn’t look like he was waiting for them. It felt a little like they’d walked into his motel room. He was standing at the window near the tiny courtesy kitchen—a table, two chairs, and a mini fridge. His back was to Dean and Sam, staring intently out of a small crack in the shades. He didn’t even flinch when Dean dropped his keys and shouted “holy crap!” 

“Um… Castiel,” Sam said, like a reminder after a whole ten seconds of tense silence had gone by. 

“You shouldn’t have bothered Amelia,” he said quietly, not turning from the window.

“Yeah, well you shouldn’t have lied about who you are. How did you get in here anyway?”

Castiel’s shoulders visibly tensed and he made a snap-turn, storming toward Dean and crowding his space in seconds. 

“You have been such a disappointment. I’m not lying. I know the truth.”

“Your name is James Novak. And you have a wife and a _kid_ \--“

There was a loud, rattling bang that Dean for a second thought was thunder. Then he realized Castiel had crowded him back to the wall and that huge sound was Castiel’s fist hitting the wall to the right of his head. 

When Sam got aggressively up in Castiel’s space, forcing him back in the middle of the room, Dean realized two things. One, there was a fist sized hole in the wall where Castiel had punched it. Two, Dean was a little bit turned on.

Castiel was glaring up at Sam like there wasn’t nearly a six-inch height difference, and probably about thirty pounds, between them. His fist was still clenched, smeared with blood and plaster. He looked narrow and rangy in his oversized trench coat, with sharp lines jutting out over his slender neck and wrists, but filled with righteous fury. There was something really frightening in his eyes—something profoundly determined and confident that Dean found utterly alien.

“I don’t have a wife or a child,” He said, looking to the side of Sam at Dean. 

“Yeah, well, I think there’s some people we saw in Pontiac this morning who would disagree with you. And if not, why is she listed as your spouse on your medical card.”

“They aren’t—“ Castiel seized up in frustration. He whipped the wallet out of his pocket, removed the aforementioned card, and flung it at Dean, followed quickly by the wallet. “That’s not real. I was never married to Amelia. Jimmy Novak was.”

“You’re Jimmy Novak!”

“You’re reading the—this film that covers people’s eyes. You should be able to see through it! I am Castiel. You are the brothers. It isn’t difficult to understand!” 

Sam held out his hands. “Whoa, okay, calm down.” He shot a look to Dean that seemed to say _stop aggravating the crazy apocalypse man who just punched a hole in the wall_. “Why don’t you just explain what you mean, Castiel? Who is James Novak?” 

Castiel sighed, his determination fading fast. “He was the man before me. The one who married Amelia. Claire’s father. He went to school… It doesn’t matter. He’s gone.” 

“Where did he go?”

“This is… this is the part where it’s blurred. It’s difficult to see. I know what’s there, underneath. I know it. The things I want to say are there but not. Just out of reach, but within sight. Do you understand?” 

Sam looked at Dean imploringly.

Castiel looked back and forth between them with such wide, hopeless eyes Dean’s gut reaction was to reach out. He’d always had an innate weakness for lost causes and people with more passion than sense—something he’d worked hard to push down in order to succeed in life. Castiel was obviously riding one hell of a rollercoaster with whatever was going on in his head. But it was about time they figured out what that really had to do with Dean and Sam. 

“Just do it,” Dean said, wincing that his attempt at encouragement started out with a freaking shoe catchphrase. Castiel didn’t seem to notice. He walked up closer, beside Sam. “You said you can see what you want to say. Well, just say it. Try harder. You say we’re important, that we’re supposed to stop _the apocalypse_. Tell us what’s going on. Tell us why we should trust you.” 

After a long moment of holding Dean’s gaze, like he was trying to predict Dean’s next move through telepathy or something, Castiel nodded slightly. 

“This isn’t reality.” 

Sam looked at Dean, somewhat disappointedly. 

“Okay, I was hoping for something a little less existential.”

But suddenly Castiel’s hand reached out to grab Dean’s arm firmly. Looking away from the earnest conviction in his eyes was impossible. 

“This isn’t reality and you can feel it.” He looked quickly to Sam. “You know it with something deeper than your senses. Things aren’t right.”

“You could say that about anything. The world is fucked up.” 

With Castiel’s eyes on him again, Dean had to fight the urge not to take a step back.

“There is knowledge that I have I shouldn’t be able to guess at, but there are still some things that are hidden from me. I know there are demons. I know there is evil. I know I was made to fight it, as were the both of you. I know my true name is Castiel. And I know… James Novak was only a vessel for my purpose, for God’s purpose.” Castiel paused, gathering a steadying breath. “I am an angel of the Lord.” 

Dean looked at Sam. The same unease and skepticism Dean was feeling was on his face too. Dean had never really been more at a loss for words than he was at that moment. He didn’t know, then, whether he should feel fortunate or frightened when a completely new voice entered the conversation. 

“Aw, I should’ve brought a coming-out card.” 

Dean couldn’t have pinpointed when it happened but there was suddenly a dark-haired woman wearing leather in their motel room, leaning casually against wall near the bathroom. Had she been hiding in there the whole time? She apparently hadn’t come in with Cas, because the first thing he did was grab Sam and Dean and pushed them behind him. 

It didn’t do much, as they both stepped back in Castiel’s space to gawk at another terrifyingly stealthy creeper busting in on their lives. 

“Um, who are you? Who is that?” 

Castiel stared at Dean like he was an idiot. “She’s a demon, obviously.”

“Oh, okay,” Sam said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Miss, I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but you need to leave. This guy has some… misunderstandings.” 

Castiel sighed and pushed Dean and Sam back again when the woman took a step closer. 

“Poor Cassandra. You pour your little heart out and know one listens. Kids these days aren’t interested in prophecy. They want proof.” 

With a flick of her eyelashes, her eyes went black. No white, no iris, all black. She smirked, evidently pleased with the reaction she got. 

“Oh. That’s fucked up,” Sam said. 

“What do you want, demon?” 

She smiled. “I’m here for my boys of course.”

“They’re not yours.” 

Castiel took a step toward her. Dean immediately wanted to pull him back, but Cas held out his hands to block them. With Cas coming in toward her left, she moved right. 

“They ain’t yours, angel,” she said, batting her eyes with mocking sweetness, but not changing the Mae West, vampish lilt to her voice. Then she snorted and looked pointedly—bafflingly—at Sam. “At least not that one. But that doesn’t matter. I’ll take ‘em both off your hands. For Daddy.”

Cas rounded toward her again, but what made Dean really nervous was that she stepped away again. At that moment, he didn’t really want to believe in demons, but she was there with black eyes. And she didn’t at all feel like a ghost, who were faded and distracted. She was very real. Dean could smell perfume from her, for fuck’s sake. But she had a very real feeling of menace to her. 

Yet she was the one moving away from Cas. Calling him angel. It was a little like she was scared of him. Or at least wary. The possibility that Cas was telling the truth, that he was actually an angel of the freaking Lord, that there were real in-the-flesh angels, made Dean feel weak in the knees. 

It also made his skin crawl.

“I guess we can do this the fun way,” she said. 

But the step she took fell short, like walking down the stairs and finding one less than you expected. She looked panic-stricken for just a second, but then smiled at Cas. 

“Well, look at you, with the compassionate breaking and entering. Protecting your hot little humans from the likes of me. You go, girl.” 

They all followed the woman’s gaze to the ceiling. In a faint chalk outline, Dean saw a pentagram like he’d seen on Castiel’s door in the church. 

Without looking at Dean and Sam, but definitely for their edification, Cas said, “It’s a devil’s trap. Only a servant of hell wouldn’t be able to pass through it.” 

She rolled her eyes. “The righteous are so predictably self-righteous.” 

Then Cas held out his hand in her direction and started uttering gravelly, garbled syllables that didn’t sound like English, or any language Dean could identify. But the woman’s reaction was clear. Her eyes went wide and she started looking around for an exit. She threw head back and opaque black smoke began pouring out of her throat. 

Dean had to blink to make sure he was seeing this correctly. It looked more liquid and alive than real smoke, but smelled a bit like sulfur and sounded like a swarm of insects. It swarmed up to ceiling in a hurricane formation and seemed to disappear through the cracks of the door. 

The woman’s body collapsed to the floor in a boneless heap. 

There was long, strained space of time where Dean swore he could only hear the clock on the wall ticking. His mind tried to leap to everything that wasn’t the body on the floor, Castiel’s growling recitation, or horrible clouds of corporeal smoke. He could feel Cas, far to his left, almost relaxing and radiating satisfaction. Sam, to his immediate right, was a tense mass of nerves in the corner of his eye. 

Finally, Dean broke.

“What in the ever living fuck was that!” 

Castiel was focused on the door, not the body on the floor. “That was the demon.” 

“That smoke?” Sam said hesitantly. “You exorcised her?” 

“Not exactly. It fled its vessel because I was about to exorcise it.” 

Dean felt like he’d been hit with a hammer. That was a demon. Demons were real. He looked at Cas. There was a knot in his stomach he didn’t like at all. All Cas’ previous proclamations loomed in alarming possibility. There was no writing anything off as impossible anymore. 

He still couldn’t commit to thinking Cas was actually an angel. It was totally fucked up. He was willing to accept ghosts and monsters and demons, but angels? Heaven? God? It filled Dean with a kind of anxiety he’d never felt before.

“Is she dead?” Sam inched closer to the body. “Oh my god, we are so fucking boned if she’s dead. Is she dead?” 

“Possibly,” Cas said with a surprising amount of calm. Maybe it wasn’t all that surprising considering he’d announced their involvement in the coming apocalypse in the same way. 

And he apparently knew how to trap and exorcise a demon. 

Sam crouched down and took a hold of her wrist so gently it was obvious he must’ve thought she could come back to life at any moment. Sam jumped up, fist pumping like he won the World Series. 

“Yes! She’s alive! We’re not going to prison. Shit, I hate that this is good news.” 

“Good,” Cas nodded. “I suggest we flee.” 

“Flee?” Dean spat.

“Yes. The demon may return. They’re after you and we have to find a more permanent way of hiding you from their sight.”

“ _They_? Who’s fucking they?” 

For the first time, Castiel looked nervous. He’d been angry and frustrated and hesitant before when we didn’t believe him. But now he looked like he was concealing something. 

“There is… a great deal to explain.” He paused, looking pained, like Dean was taking something from him. “I can’t be certain I know everything. But you know now you’re in danger. We should go from here. Far away from here.” 

“Yeah,” Sam said breathlessly. “I agree. We should go. We are not ready for this.” 

Some kind of warning was flashing in Dean’s mind. He didn’t know what to do. The motel room screamed _crime scene_ to him now, but what crime? There was no fucking occult department at the police station. That was why he and Sam set out after ghosts in the first place. So someone would be taking care of these problems. 

“What about her?” Dean said. 

Cas tilted his head in confusion at Dean. “What do you mean? She’s alive. We have to hurry. We need to go to my room and get my notebooks.” Cas opened the door, apparently unconcerned by the unconscious girl’s body laying half in the way. 

“Where are we going to go?” Sam asked. 

Dean sighed. He had no flipping idea. All he knew was that what they just saw had changed everything. 

He shrugged, trying for more nonchalance than he knew he was feeling, “Follow the crazy apocalypse man.” 

~*~

They stopped for the night on the far side of Iowa, near the border of Minnesota, after driving all day and a tentative agreement to just fucking drive in any direction they could. They’d grabbed their bags, got one ready for Cas—which was about 75% nightmare notebooks from his room—and wound up leaving the unconscious girl near the front doors of the motel before calling the front desk anonymously and speeding out of the parking lot. 

It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t like they could go to the hospital or the police without walking away in handcuffs.

During the drive, Dean felt anxious. This was crazy. Everything about what had happened in the last day was crazy. And that was coming from a man who had quit his high-paying job to hunt ghosts. He kept looking in the rearview mirror to see Cas, who looked quietly pleased with himself the whole way. 

At a gas station stop, Dean cornered Sam while Castiel looked on curiously at vibrant gas station paintings of eagles swooping over American flags while fireworks went off in the background. 

“So, what? Do you really think he’s, you know? Angelic?” 

Sam’s nose flared and he swallowed nervously, but Dean could see in the hope, the almost childlike awe in his eyes. 

“I don’t know. I mean, demons though.”

Dean let out a reluctant nod. 

“It makes sense. In a way. If there are demons, why wouldn’t there be angels?” 

“Why would there be? No one ever said there had be some kind of, whatever, spiritual balance in the universe. There’s a lot more shit people than not. I don’t see demons equal angels, you know.” 

Sam looked like Dean had just kicked his puppy, but nodded. “Yeah, I guess. But shouldn’t there be that balance?” 

“We’re not talking about should, we’re talking about what is.” 

“Well, there definitely are demons. And _he_ knows what to do with them. That’s good enough for me.” 

When they finally decided to give it a rest for the night, Dean shocked himself by volunteering to share a room with Castiel. He had a feeling he shocked Sam too, but Sam was too jazzed about getting a single to delve any deeper into the sudden change in behavior. Part of Dean said it was about keeping an eye on the new, unstable element in their arrangement, but, like everything that had happened since Castiel, it was a lot more confused than that. 

Dean was a little surprised at the end of the night when he heard the sounds of Cas showering and brushing his teeth in the bathroom. And when he came out wearing a simple white undershirt and flannel pajama bottoms. Dean had gotten used to the idea of Cas being perpetually and ethereally armored in a rumpled suit and trench coat.

He looked surprisingly lean and vulnerable without the suit and coat. Like a soldier out of uniform. He had real skin and arms and legs and everything. Since the demon, he’d also been significantly less tense. 

Castiel went straight for his duffle bag, hair still damp and curling up from the shower, and paged trough one of his notebooks as if by routine, but then tore out a page and handed it to Dean. 

“I want you to have this.” 

It was a blocky sketch of, well, probably Dean. It didn’t look new. Some of the lines around the figure were smeared and dulled. It had been done a long time ago. The focus in the drawing seemed to be around the tension and force in the shoulders. There were no eyes. There seemed to be an effect than made it feel like light was coming out of the space where the eyes should have been. And around the figure were bubbles filled in with the funky symbols from Castiel’s bedroom door.

It was both kind of complimentary and fucking terrifying. 

“Um…” Dean had no follow up. Was this the sort of thing you thanked someone for or sent to the police to compile evidence for a restraining order? 

“I can see the words around you even now. You’re going to save the world.” 

Dean took a second to catch his breath because that could have been some weird platitude, but Castiel said it like it was _two plus two is four_. 

“You really know how to knock the wind out of a conversation, Cas.” 

He grinned, almost to himself. “I like that you call me that.” 

“Listen—“

“You don’t believe me yet.”

Dean frowned. He didn’t, or he didn’t want to. He couldn’t really tell which it was. 

“Dean, do you have any idea what it’s like seeing things that no one else can see? It’s very discouraging. It’s frightening. There are countless opportunities to doubt oneself. People want to stay away from you, they look at you in fear. I’ve been trying to walk through this mire of visions for years while people told me I needed to stop and gave me drugs to keep me slow and confused. It was hard, but I kept my faith. Now for the first time I have proof. The demons are real. You and Sam are more than images in my head.”

Cas turned back, putting his bag away. “You don’t need to believe me yet. I have faith in you.” 

Dean was drowning in the things he had no reasonable response for. 

After the lights went out, Dean was still awake and stunned in bed. Even though Cas was in the other twin to his right, he felt like they were right next to each other. He could hear Cas’ breathing and it didn’t sound like he as sleeping. Utterly surreal, sharing a completely silent intimate space with a man who claimed to be an angel. 

Who might’ve been a real angel. 

He didn’t really know who this man was. Or what was going to happen now that demons were real and the world got suddenly more dangerous and less explainable. All Dean knew about Castiel was that there was something inside aching to trust him. He could feel in his bones that Castiel would have his back. 

“Hey, Cas.” 

“Yes, Dean.” 

“I don’t think I can do what you want with this whole fighting demons, saving the world thing. I’m not… I’m not special or powerful or anything. But I think maybe we can do it together. You’ll do it with me, right?”

“Of course, Dean. Of course I’ll fight for you.” 

Dean settled into bed more easily after that. He wasn’t sure, but he thought maybe the world was starting to feel like it should have all along.

**Author's Note:**

> I have some vague ideas on continuing, specifically doing something trippy and confusing from this Castiel's pov, but I'm not sure. I wasn't going to finish or post this at all, because I'm not really involved in Supernatural fandom and I don't even know where the best place to post fic is. But I got the urge to finish this a few days ago, so here it is. 
> 
> You'll have to tell me what you think and if it's worth going on. Thank you for reading!


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